<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Colours Of Cold: Mineral, Shell, And Burning Blue by number_of_the_beast_is_666</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29807748">The Colours Of Cold: Mineral, Shell, And Burning Blue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/number_of_the_beast_is_666/pseuds/number_of_the_beast_is_666'>number_of_the_beast_is_666</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Musketeer March 2021 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Musketeers (2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s01e04 The Good Soldier, Gen, Imagine it as introspection after the events of The Good Soldier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:20:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>799</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29807748</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/number_of_the_beast_is_666/pseuds/number_of_the_beast_is_666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For Musketeer March 2021, Day 2: Cold (alt. prompt is blue)</p><p>Aramis' recollection of the events that happened at Savoy, and what that meant for him then and means for him now.</p><p> </p><p>Title from "Cold" by Robert Francis.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aramis &amp; Those Musketeers Who Died At Savoy, Aramis | René d'Herblay &amp; Marsac (The Musketeers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Musketeer March 2021 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Colours Of Cold: Mineral, Shell, And Burning Blue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Apologies for any mistakes, and I hope you enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The burning is what he remembers. He remembers it because it was out of place; a snowy forest in Savoy during the late night is not where you find fire.<br/>But he’d felt the flames lick at him all the same.</p><p>Concentrated in his feet, like those supposed heretics walking over the burning coals, making each step over uneven ground pulse in time with his heart, the rushing of blood in his ears sound just how he imagined the soles of his feet sounded when he touched the smouldering ground. <em> St. Lawrence, I’m done, turn me over and take a bite. </em></p><p>If this is his martyrdom, Aramis thinks he’s okay not being a saint.<br/>The snow-covered ground seems to burn bright like the summer sun even if the moon is a sliver in the sky. It’s blue in his sleep-hazy eyes, blue like the absolute dark of night, blue like the bottom of a candle flame, so blue it made his eyes burn as fiercely as his feet.</p><p>Maybe the steady staccato beat in his ears is the trumpets of angels like those in the murals on the palace ceiling, or maybe this is an attitude of a rapture playing out in his mind as he is struck down with premonition like John, or maybe this is that forewarning come true, the sinner’s nightmare playing out before their eyes. <em> His </em> nightmares, <em>his</em> eyes.</p><p>His, his… Brothers-in-arms. His brethren, lying on this blue-flame land, the slow rain of fire and hail burying them-</p><p>He knows he can’t have been warm but he would swear on God that he felt fire that night.</p><p>He knows he must have mistaken the falling snow for ash and sulphur, knows the pounding of his blood was due to a bad shock, knows the heat was hypothermia’s frozen grip disguised as the devil’s claws in his sickly delirium.<br/>The cold had lashed out at him in the gentlest breeze that night, more bite to the air than a switch, catching on his shirt and tugging, exposing more skin to the unforgiving night, and its unforgiving teeth. </p><p>But knowing it in hindsight doesn’t erase the blood-rain-stained snow surrounding dark figures on the ground, doesn’t calm the heat in his feet, the heat up to his thighs, and the heat in his heart, an overwhelming inferno that threatens to consume him like kindling shavings.</p><p>Now he just thinks about it like he should have died there.<br/>Some days, days when the first snow of the season falls, he accepts his death and names himself nameless; one of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, their breaths snatched away by the sneaking limbs of winter, just a man taken so viciously by the world that his soul got lost on the way, lingering as a ghost in a poor play of his former life.</p><p>So maybe he died.<br/>Maybe some delicate, little fragile part of him, irreparable and essential, died and now he’s on his second life, stained with stigmata as the only sign.</p><p>Maybe the quiet after the massacre was his forty days dead; it certainly felt long enough. His last look at his betrayer, and then the quiet dark of grief and death.</p><p>Christ must have been cold too, in the dead of night, starved and alone, craving the touch of his apostles’ warm hands and the soft heat of their love.</p><p>
  <span>Christ too must have felt his crown dig into his head, as Aramis certainly does, his crown of blood-stained bandages had dug in like thorns, ordaining him the victor, the survivor.</span>
</p><p>His progress makes him feel less like an angel is pressing him into the dirt, its foot as a pillar of fire forcing him to fight for breath between the fire and the filth for any relief from the crushing, suffocating might of it.</p><p>But in the constant hubbub of Paris, strapping his pauldron snugly onto his shoulder, Porthos and d’Artagnan rapping on his door in a chaotic staccato, and he hears the younger man whine and Porthos chuckle, Aramis can imagine Athos standing away from the door like he always does when the sun is out, the faintest trace of a smile peeking out from under the tipped brim of his hat as he teases d’Artagnan.</p><p>In that noise, however uncoordinated and off-key, he feels just like a man. A man who’s been mourning for far too long, a man betrayed by men and betrayed by friends, but a man who’s lived and survived.</p><p>Just a man who is going to enjoy the gentle warmth of the sun with his friends and bask in the day, light-hearted and still hurting, but the temperate weather adds strength to the set of his shoulders, and he smiles as he opens his door to greet his friends.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>